Meyer -- Buckeyes' toast with 'championship water' put 2012 team in high gear

Friday

Mar 29, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 29, 2013 at 10:19 PM

The coach told attendees at the OSU coaches clinic today it took him a while to find the symbolic magic ingredient

Tim May, The Columbus Dispatch

By TIM MAY

At the heart of Ohio State's drive to its unexpected unbeaten season of 2012 was not a lesson learned, coach Urban Meyer said, but "a lesson relearned" about what makes the football experience great.

In short, it was that the essence of a true team flows from the heart, and when all involved buy in to that, it can be a wonderful thing, he told more than a thousand attendees at OSU's annual football coaches clinic early this afternoon.

He saw the players and coaches on his first OSU team buy in at "11:22 a.m. on Sept.29," he said, in a hotel meeting room in East Lansing, Mich., where the Buckeyes were getting ready to play Michigan State later that day in the fifth game of the season. In the weeks before, they had managed to remain undefeated, muddling though a pre-Big Ten schedule that shouldn't have been as challenging as it turned out to be.

But with a brutal start to the Big Ten season vs. Michigan State and Nebraska looming something was missing with the team, Meyer said, and "just like you lift up the hood on a car (to check the engine), we lifted up the hood on our team. There was something wrong."

In his first season he had inherited a talented group of players, with seniors committed toOhioStateand the cause, but he had sensed that while there was no rebellion from players used to another way of doing things, there was "evaluation" going on, both by the players and the newly formed coaching staff.

He didn't find the fix at first, thinking just working the players harder would do the trick, but signposts started leading him to the real answer. The first of the "magical moments," as he called them, came when senior defensive end John Simon, playing despite a painful right shoulder, broke down in tears while addressing the team after it managed to beatCalifornia. Winning and upholding school tradition meant so much to Simon, "I got a knot in my stomach," Meyer said.

Then came a talk to the team and coaches by former OSU running back Butler By'not'e during what Meyer calls the "reflection time" he holds every Sunday during the season. Meyer said By'not'e, an ordained minister and also first-year high school coach, came in with his own speech, but "it was as if I had written the script and said 'Here, read this. ' "

By'not'e's message had three major elements:

n Choice, as in choose to buy in to the team and what the coaches are teaching, to see them not as options but as commands; choose to not be lazy or half-hearted but to do what is asked to the ultimate.

n Sacrifice, as in give up other things, such as relationships with distractors and detractors which might be getting in the way of devoting oneself to be a fully fledged member of the effort.

n Time, as in devote the amount of time it takes to be a truly competitive football team. It is much more than the NCAA stated maximum of 20 allowed per week, Meyer said. "If we spent only 20, we'd be a good old-fashioned 3-8, 4-7, 5-6 football team." The extra comes in the form of on-your-own video study and other ways which help a player fully prepare for Saturday games.

Boiled down, By'not'e's talk became known as "CST," Meyer said, and was what the Buckeyes uttered each time they had a team-huddle hands-in break down after that.

The pregame at MSU soon followed, and Meyer said that in a program oozing tradition, from all the national championships, Heisman winners, Buckeye leaves, victory bell, Buckeye Grove, gold pants awarded for beating Michigan, and the like, he and strength-condition coach Mickey Marotti opted to introduce what they hoped would become another: a toast with "championship water."

It's what Marotti had been calling the water he and his staff urged the players to drink early and often in preseason camp to ward off dehydration. Before that MSU game, Meyer, who said both the staff and the players had been stunted from total development by what he called constant "evaluation" that comes when there is a coaching change, opted to use the water as a symbol of unification.

"The message was this: 'You've been evaluating, you haven't been playing (to the utmost). Our coaches have been evaluating, they haven't been coaching. … I want to eliminate call confusion in our program. When we lost this game that you're getting ready to go lose, don't throw a helmet, don't kick a locker, don't use bad language.

" 'I'm going to tell you why we're going to lose. It's because you guys are evaluating. You're not playing. … Our coaches, you're not coaching, you're evaluating. You're trying to figure this thing out, and as long as you're doing that you're not coaching.

" ' One of the greatest moments in an athlete's life is when he rips his chest open and hands his coach his heart, and says coach me as hard as possibly you can. I've eliminated all that other nonsense. Let's go be a team, let's go do something that maybe hasn't been done since 2002 (atOhioState, completing a season unbeaten and untied) … let's go win every game we play.' "

He said he then told the players to stand, fill their glasses "with championship water, and I saw some tears coming out of Zach Boren's face and some of the other great seniors as I'm talking to 'em. 'I want to make a toast. And don't you stand up, don't you toast with championship water unless you're going to rip your chest open and you give (your heart) to your coach and let 'em coach you. And as a coach, don't raise a toast unless you give your heart to your player, which you have not done up to the point.' "

The Buckeyes prevailed 17-16 that day after making huge plays on offense, defense and on special teams, and rolled on to 12-0.

"We started a tradition that day that will forever be part ofOhioStatefootball history, because it was part of one of the (only seven OSU) undefeated teams," Meyer said. "That speech wouldn't have been very good if the kids didn't buy in. … I'm here to tell you that in my coaching career, that's the best group of kids I've ever been around, and the best leaders I've been around."